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Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy
In 1958, an African-American handyman named Jimmy Wilson was sentenced to die in Alabama for stealing two dollars. Shocking as this sentence was, it was overturned only after intense international attention and the interference of an embarrassed John Foster Dulles. Soon after the United States' segregated military defeated a racist regime in World War II, American racism was a major concern of U.S. allies, a chief Soviet propaganda theme, and an obstacle to American Cold War goals throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Each lynching harmed foreign relations, and "the Negro problem" became a central issue in every administration from Truman to Johnson.
In what may be the best analysis of how international relations affected any domestic issue, Mary Dudziak interprets postwar civil rights as a Cold War feature. She argues that the Cold War helped facilitate key social reforms, including desegregation. Civil rights activists gained tremendous advantage as the government sought to polish its international image. But improving the nation's reputation did not always require real change. This focus on image rather than substance--combined with constraints on McCarthy-era political activism and the triumph of law-and-order rhetoric--limited the nature and extent of progress.
Archival information, much of it newly available, supports Dudziak's argument that civil rights was Cold War policy. But the story is also one of an African-American veteran of World War II lynched in Georgia; an attorney general flooded by civil rights petitions from abroad; the teenagers who desegregated Little Rock's Central High; African diplomats denied restaurant service; black artists living in Europe and supporting the civil rights movement from overseas; conservative politicians viewing desegregation as a communist plot; and civil rights leaders who saw their struggle eclipsed by Vietnam.
Never before has any scholar so directly connected civil rights and the Cold War. Contributing mightily to our understanding of both, Dudziak advances--in clear and lively prose--a new wave of scholarship that corrects isolationist tendencies in American history by applying an international perspective to domestic affairs.
In what may be the best analysis of how international relations affected any domestic issue, Mary Dudziak interprets postwar civil rights as a Cold War feature. She argues that the Cold War helped facilitate key social reforms, including desegregation. Civil rights activists gained tremendous advantage as the government sought to polish its international image. But improving the nation's reputation did not always require real change. This focus on image rather than substance--combined with constraints on McCarthy-era political activism and the triumph of law-and-order rhetoric--limited the nature and extent of progress.
Archival information, much of it newly available, supports Dudziak's argument that civil rights was Cold War policy. But the story is also one of an African-American veteran of World War II lynched in Georgia; an attorney general flooded by civil rights petitions from abroad; the teenagers who desegregated Little Rock's Central High; African diplomats denied restaurant service; black artists living in Europe and supporting the civil rights movement from overseas; conservative politicians viewing desegregation as a communist plot; and civil rights leaders who saw their struggle eclipsed by Vietnam.
Never before has any scholar so directly connected civil rights and the Cold War. Contributing mightily to our understanding of both, Dudziak advances--in clear and lively prose--a new wave of scholarship that corrects isolationist tendencies in American history by applying an international perspective to domestic affairs.
344 pages, Paperback
First published November 13, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
June 13, 2021
A very interesting book that deserves to be widely read by scholars and teachers; teachers especially should integrate Dudziak's analysis of the relationship of the Civil Rights movement and the CW. The argument is straightforward but important: the Cold War gave the US leadership a reason to care about the decolonizing world's opinion of the US, thus giving CRM activists great leverage in their struggle for equality. U.S. racism was a massive liability on the world stage, taken advantage of by the Soviets in their propaganda and paid attention to very closely by the international media, including in Asia and Africa. Dudziak shows how presidents from Truman to LBJ came to see fighting the COld War and achieving CR reform as linked battles. It started with concern about the image of democracy, as in the title, but eventually US leaders came to see that only concrete reforms would shift the international narrative. Thus, the Cold War emerges as a crucial context for the successes of the CRM.
On the other hand, Dudziak argues that there was a trade-off in this alignment. The US government promoted only the civil rights activists and ideas that fit its desired image as an endlessly progressing democracy. THat was a binding force on the CRM itself, as you could see with the taking of passports from black activists like Paul Robeson whose criticism of the US was "out of bounds" because he refused to treat racism as somehow aberrational in U.S. history. Lastly, when the CRM started to splinter and after major legal reforms were passed, global scrutiny of the US moved on to teh Vietnam War, taking away a crucial leverage points for reformers in general.
A few mild criticisms: sometimes you feel that you are reading the same point over and over again, just in reference to different Civil Rights events. That kind of documentation is important but it doesn't make for gripping reading at all times. Second, in later chapters Dudziak makes a bit of a false dichotomy between class and race, arguing that the CRM did better dealing with race issues than class ones in the later 1960s because there's no recognition of class discrepancies or oppression in US political thought. I think she would probably write that section differently now given the intersectional nature of class and race. Still, this book presents a concept that all teachers of US history from secondary levels up should know, and it would be something I might assign in a grad course on US historiography because it represents the diplo/poli field's shift to a more global lens on US history.
On the other hand, Dudziak argues that there was a trade-off in this alignment. The US government promoted only the civil rights activists and ideas that fit its desired image as an endlessly progressing democracy. THat was a binding force on the CRM itself, as you could see with the taking of passports from black activists like Paul Robeson whose criticism of the US was "out of bounds" because he refused to treat racism as somehow aberrational in U.S. history. Lastly, when the CRM started to splinter and after major legal reforms were passed, global scrutiny of the US moved on to teh Vietnam War, taking away a crucial leverage points for reformers in general.
A few mild criticisms: sometimes you feel that you are reading the same point over and over again, just in reference to different Civil Rights events. That kind of documentation is important but it doesn't make for gripping reading at all times. Second, in later chapters Dudziak makes a bit of a false dichotomy between class and race, arguing that the CRM did better dealing with race issues than class ones in the later 1960s because there's no recognition of class discrepancies or oppression in US political thought. I think she would probably write that section differently now given the intersectional nature of class and race. Still, this book presents a concept that all teachers of US history from secondary levels up should know, and it would be something I might assign in a grad course on US historiography because it represents the diplo/poli field's shift to a more global lens on US history.
October 4, 2023
Not critical or analytical enough to be very useful.
The book is supposed to broaden the context of US civil rights history to include an international dimension, but Dudziak seems to almost completely align herself with US policy objectives. She uncritically adapts a "democracy vs. communism" point of view; describes pro-US propaganda without challenging it whatsoever; takes direct quotes from the State Department to frame contemporary events in a positive light for the US, instead of making her own analysis; and quotes US politicians at face value, assuming their words represent noble, deeply held beliefs.
In juxtaposition to Dudziak's pro-US narrative, she consistently, baselessly frames civil rights critiques of the USA from China, the USSR, et al as cynical manipulations. In response to a quote from a Radio Moscow broadcast about the US's internal violence against black folks being a mirror to the violence committed by the US against the people of Vietnam, Dudziak writes, "Other nations chose not to capitalize on U.S. difficulties but instead reacted with profound concern." (p. 245) Who decided Radio Moscow wasn't legitimately concerned? Maybe Dudziak forgot to quote Dean Rusk on the subject.
Another liberal book that pretends to offer a new, challenging view of a subject, but pivots around and uses the opportunity to endorse an unquestioningly pro-US narrative.
The book is supposed to broaden the context of US civil rights history to include an international dimension, but Dudziak seems to almost completely align herself with US policy objectives. She uncritically adapts a "democracy vs. communism" point of view; describes pro-US propaganda without challenging it whatsoever; takes direct quotes from the State Department to frame contemporary events in a positive light for the US, instead of making her own analysis; and quotes US politicians at face value, assuming their words represent noble, deeply held beliefs.
In juxtaposition to Dudziak's pro-US narrative, she consistently, baselessly frames civil rights critiques of the USA from China, the USSR, et al as cynical manipulations. In response to a quote from a Radio Moscow broadcast about the US's internal violence against black folks being a mirror to the violence committed by the US against the people of Vietnam, Dudziak writes, "Other nations chose not to capitalize on U.S. difficulties but instead reacted with profound concern." (p. 245) Who decided Radio Moscow wasn't legitimately concerned? Maybe Dudziak forgot to quote Dean Rusk on the subject.
Another liberal book that pretends to offer a new, challenging view of a subject, but pivots around and uses the opportunity to endorse an unquestioningly pro-US narrative.
March 15, 2014
This book deals with the effect that civil rights had on foreign relations during the Cold War The state department used the US Information agency to put spin on out race problems. The communists used our race issues against us through their propaganda. During the fifties the US would revoke the passports of any citizen who spoke out against our racial problems.
The author then takes specific incidents and related how foreign countries reacted to them. Little Rock , Birmingham and school desegregation are a few of the topics covered.
The author then takes specific incidents and related how foreign countries reacted to them. Little Rock , Birmingham and school desegregation are a few of the topics covered.
June 8, 2010
In her well-researched and well-documented treatise, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy, Mary L. Dudziak “explores the impact of Cold War foreign affairs on U.S. civil rights reform.” (14) She supports her premise that Cold War foreign affairs had a significant impact upon U. S. civil rights policy with numerous examples drawn principally from primary sources. “While civil rights reform in different eras has been motivated by a variety of factors,” she asserts, “one element during the early Cold War years was the need for [civil rights:] reform in order to make credible the government’s argument about race and democracy.” (14)
She deftly examines the apparent contradiction in the eyes of the world between the principles of equality guaranteed by the Constitution and the actual circumstances facing African-Americans at home. She notes that during the conflict against the racist doctrines of Nazism and fascism, the U.S. had aired its own dirty laundry of racism and segregation before the world in its treatment of African-American soldiers. After World War II, the United States entered center stage in world opinion as the leader of the “free world.” The conflict with the principles of freedom and democracy demonstrated by Jim Crow laws and racial segregation were an international embarrassment to the U.S. and threatened the moral leadership role that would be crucial to winning the Cold War. The Soviet Union and the communist press around the world were having a field day highlighting American hypocrisy. The world waited to see if the U.S. would put into practice domestically the principles it espoused internationally.
Mary L. Dudziak is a credible scholar as a professor of law, history, and political science at the University of Southern California Law School, and is a recognized expert in international approaches to American legal history. She has written several other books, including Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall's African Journey, September 11 in History, and Legal Borderlands: Law and the Construction of American Borders.
Dudziak begins the with the story of Jimmy Wilson, an African-American repairperson sentenced to death in 1957 by an all-white jury in Alabama for stealing less than two dollars in change. The resulting international outcry eventually forced Secretary of State John Foster Dulles to get involved in the case. Dudziak’s primary sources gleaned from her research at the United States Information Agency (USIA) allowed her to cite sources of this protest as obscure as the Voice of Ethiopia and the Ghanaian Ashanti Pioneer. She observes that both the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) stressed the international repercussions that would ensue should Wilson be executed. Though the Alabama Supreme Court had upheld the conviction, Alabama Governor James Folsom hastily granted Wilson clemency to end the “international hullabaloo.” (6)
The immediate postwar period saw a resurgence of racial violence, and the Soviet Union made full use of it for propaganda purposes. Harry Truman, she asserts, recognized that this unrest was detrimental to U.S. foreign relations; as a result, he desegregated the armed forces and established the Fair Employment Board in the Civil Service Commission. She notes that the African-American vote was critical to his victory in the 1948 election. When he announced the Truman Doctrine to contain the spread of worldwide Communism, it became essential that the U.S. present a favorable impression to the world. This meant working on a solution to the race problem. She asserts, “Rehabilitating the moral character of American democracy would become an important focus of Cold War diplomacy.”(46) The U.S. government began a coordinated propaganda effort to present the race problem to the world in a favorable light. To this end, they candidly admitted the problems that existed in the past, but insisted that a free and democratic society would solve the problems where a totalitarian society could not. They pointed to efforts and progress being made, but sought to silence domestic critics of this attitude, often denying them permission to go abroad.
The rise of anti-Communist sentiment domestically also meant that the civil rights movement, in order to be accepted, needed to insure that their efforts were not perceived as anti-American or pro-communist. Dudziak contends that Cold War domestic attitudes thus moderated the civil rights movement towards more benign methods.
She points out that Eisenhower was influenced by international opinion in his response to the Little Rock crisis. The landmark Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954, however, was publicized internationally as proof of success in the effort to resolve the problem. John F. Kennedy, she claims, was sympathetic to the movement, but only embraced the efforts to further his international agenda. The 1963 Civil Rights Act made a positive impression overseas, while the pictures of the brutal suppression of civil rights created more horror internationally. She contends that Lyndon Johnson finally began to turn the tide of international public opinion with his determined efforts at civil rights enforcement. She ends the analysis at the Vietnam War, however, when she says international attention refocused from civil rights to the war.
In this book, Dudziak makes powerful arguments in support of her contention that international opinion helped shape the civil rights movement. Her effective use of primary sources obtained in her USIA research well document her assertions, which makes it difficult to take exception to her statements. This is a well-written, easily read book that definitely adds a new dimension to understanding the civil rights movement.
She deftly examines the apparent contradiction in the eyes of the world between the principles of equality guaranteed by the Constitution and the actual circumstances facing African-Americans at home. She notes that during the conflict against the racist doctrines of Nazism and fascism, the U.S. had aired its own dirty laundry of racism and segregation before the world in its treatment of African-American soldiers. After World War II, the United States entered center stage in world opinion as the leader of the “free world.” The conflict with the principles of freedom and democracy demonstrated by Jim Crow laws and racial segregation were an international embarrassment to the U.S. and threatened the moral leadership role that would be crucial to winning the Cold War. The Soviet Union and the communist press around the world were having a field day highlighting American hypocrisy. The world waited to see if the U.S. would put into practice domestically the principles it espoused internationally.
Mary L. Dudziak is a credible scholar as a professor of law, history, and political science at the University of Southern California Law School, and is a recognized expert in international approaches to American legal history. She has written several other books, including Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall's African Journey, September 11 in History, and Legal Borderlands: Law and the Construction of American Borders.
Dudziak begins the with the story of Jimmy Wilson, an African-American repairperson sentenced to death in 1957 by an all-white jury in Alabama for stealing less than two dollars in change. The resulting international outcry eventually forced Secretary of State John Foster Dulles to get involved in the case. Dudziak’s primary sources gleaned from her research at the United States Information Agency (USIA) allowed her to cite sources of this protest as obscure as the Voice of Ethiopia and the Ghanaian Ashanti Pioneer. She observes that both the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) stressed the international repercussions that would ensue should Wilson be executed. Though the Alabama Supreme Court had upheld the conviction, Alabama Governor James Folsom hastily granted Wilson clemency to end the “international hullabaloo.” (6)
The immediate postwar period saw a resurgence of racial violence, and the Soviet Union made full use of it for propaganda purposes. Harry Truman, she asserts, recognized that this unrest was detrimental to U.S. foreign relations; as a result, he desegregated the armed forces and established the Fair Employment Board in the Civil Service Commission. She notes that the African-American vote was critical to his victory in the 1948 election. When he announced the Truman Doctrine to contain the spread of worldwide Communism, it became essential that the U.S. present a favorable impression to the world. This meant working on a solution to the race problem. She asserts, “Rehabilitating the moral character of American democracy would become an important focus of Cold War diplomacy.”(46) The U.S. government began a coordinated propaganda effort to present the race problem to the world in a favorable light. To this end, they candidly admitted the problems that existed in the past, but insisted that a free and democratic society would solve the problems where a totalitarian society could not. They pointed to efforts and progress being made, but sought to silence domestic critics of this attitude, often denying them permission to go abroad.
The rise of anti-Communist sentiment domestically also meant that the civil rights movement, in order to be accepted, needed to insure that their efforts were not perceived as anti-American or pro-communist. Dudziak contends that Cold War domestic attitudes thus moderated the civil rights movement towards more benign methods.
She points out that Eisenhower was influenced by international opinion in his response to the Little Rock crisis. The landmark Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954, however, was publicized internationally as proof of success in the effort to resolve the problem. John F. Kennedy, she claims, was sympathetic to the movement, but only embraced the efforts to further his international agenda. The 1963 Civil Rights Act made a positive impression overseas, while the pictures of the brutal suppression of civil rights created more horror internationally. She contends that Lyndon Johnson finally began to turn the tide of international public opinion with his determined efforts at civil rights enforcement. She ends the analysis at the Vietnam War, however, when she says international attention refocused from civil rights to the war.
In this book, Dudziak makes powerful arguments in support of her contention that international opinion helped shape the civil rights movement. Her effective use of primary sources obtained in her USIA research well document her assertions, which makes it difficult to take exception to her statements. This is a well-written, easily read book that definitely adds a new dimension to understanding the civil rights movement.
Read
February 14, 2025Didn't have the opportunity to fully read every single page of this book, but I did get through the bulk of it in great detail! I count myself blessed for the opportunity to have read this book. Truthfully, it gave me a lot of context for the global response to summer 2020 (iykyk) and was just something I would never have read without class context forcing it on me. Dudziak does an awesome job of explaining how seemingly minor or regional racial tensions made great ripples and provoked a reevaluation of America as the bastion of democracy in the Cold War. She also addresses how the federal government used civil rights policy in part to save the image of America during the critical period. I would have liked more information about how the layman participated in global campaigns and how some of the organizations like NAACP etc. responded to the feds' push for image over social change. Also, she sometimes makes it out like the feds were more concerned with saving face than with actually helping people iN THE SAME PARAGRAPH as she lauds the leaders for their progressive mindsets and desires to help achieve equality of race. Overall a good and important part of the historiography of Civil Rights!
September 24, 2025
Read for class
A valuable reconsideration of the civil rights movement in a more global context, though, one that often is conveyed in a very monotonous and uneventful manner.
A valuable reconsideration of the civil rights movement in a more global context, though, one that often is conveyed in a very monotonous and uneventful manner.
February 9, 2022
Cold War Civil Rights helps explain not simply an international context for the civil rights movement in the United States but a clear picture of how American diplomatic considerations shaped response to that movement. Excerpts from news outlets across the world describing major events, from lynchings to voting rights legislation, are interesting in their own right. However, Dudziak uses them to show how higher-ups in the State department reacted, crafting rhetoric and pushing for policies that would make the world look more favorably on the treatment and status of Black Americans, whether by obscuring the truth or actually improving conditions.
The book is academic but still very easy to read. Dudziak weaves quotes into her text fluidly. There are times in the book, however, when it seems unclear whether something is an assertion, a statement of fact by Dudziak, or a statement by some source. Nonetheless, the author seems to try quite hard to avoid speculating or interpreting beyond what primary sources (communications from the State Department, mostly) say. That said, she is very accepting of the framing of the Cold War as communism vs. democracy and doesn't differentiate much between political versus economic systems, not really discussing capitalism as a concept distinct from democracy until the last chapter. This framing is tenuous given the involvement of the given the CIA's role in deposing democratic governments in Iran and Guatemala during the period in question.
Dudziak structures the book by discussing an event (e.g. conflict over integration in Little Rock) then demonstrating the world's response and the reaction of State Department officials. For the most part, this is an effective format for showing the foreign-policy side, but it less so at showing how movement figures placed their own ideas and strategies within a global context, aside from a few quotes. No doubt this is the result of using State Department documents as sources. Civil rights leaders did not create huge numbers of official records for Dudziak to pore over. I think this shows a slight weakness in what I perceive to be Dudziak's unwillingness to speculate much and adherence to "objective" source material. By nature of what is available, the picture it paints is not balanced.
So far I feel I've been pretty critical in this review, but I thought the book was well-written and very informative given how quick a read it is. The book covers events from about 1946-1965, petering out after the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. This drop off in material though does not seem to be the result of the author's choices so much as a shift in focus abroad from American race relations to American militarism. I was born and raised in the U.S., and the impression I got from my history classes was that the civil rights movement really took off in the mid 1960's and was a part of the tumultuous late 60's. I am now more cognizant of the shaping of narratives around civil rights in America, and it's hard not to think that portraying the movement as coming to prominence shortly before passage of civil rights legislation paints a picture of a much more responsive and compassionate federal government and of a less racist society.
The book is academic but still very easy to read. Dudziak weaves quotes into her text fluidly. There are times in the book, however, when it seems unclear whether something is an assertion, a statement of fact by Dudziak, or a statement by some source. Nonetheless, the author seems to try quite hard to avoid speculating or interpreting beyond what primary sources (communications from the State Department, mostly) say. That said, she is very accepting of the framing of the Cold War as communism vs. democracy and doesn't differentiate much between political versus economic systems, not really discussing capitalism as a concept distinct from democracy until the last chapter. This framing is tenuous given the involvement of the given the CIA's role in deposing democratic governments in Iran and Guatemala during the period in question.
Dudziak structures the book by discussing an event (e.g. conflict over integration in Little Rock) then demonstrating the world's response and the reaction of State Department officials. For the most part, this is an effective format for showing the foreign-policy side, but it less so at showing how movement figures placed their own ideas and strategies within a global context, aside from a few quotes. No doubt this is the result of using State Department documents as sources. Civil rights leaders did not create huge numbers of official records for Dudziak to pore over. I think this shows a slight weakness in what I perceive to be Dudziak's unwillingness to speculate much and adherence to "objective" source material. By nature of what is available, the picture it paints is not balanced.
So far I feel I've been pretty critical in this review, but I thought the book was well-written and very informative given how quick a read it is. The book covers events from about 1946-1965, petering out after the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. This drop off in material though does not seem to be the result of the author's choices so much as a shift in focus abroad from American race relations to American militarism. I was born and raised in the U.S., and the impression I got from my history classes was that the civil rights movement really took off in the mid 1960's and was a part of the tumultuous late 60's. I am now more cognizant of the shaping of narratives around civil rights in America, and it's hard not to think that portraying the movement as coming to prominence shortly before passage of civil rights legislation paints a picture of a much more responsive and compassionate federal government and of a less racist society.
August 16, 2024
The dominating mythology of the American civil rights movement is of a nation "woke" to democracy by WW II and its fight against Nazi racialism, finally turning round to put its own postwar house in order. Would that it were so simple. As Mary Dudziak writes, civil rights began as an exercise in top down politics and law, clearing the road for Freedom Marchers, Riders, and Sitters to follow.
Not that these weren't important - just that the romantic imagery of the Pettus Bridge and the March on Washington would have been impossible without the establishment drive, in courts and government, to address segregationist America's image problem in the emerging anti-colonial Third World as it competed with "the Communist Bloc" for global hearts and minds.
Dudziak demonstrates that for Harry Truman, Dean Acheson, the Warren Supreme Court, and latterly Lyndon Johnson, the need to democratize America went hand-in-hand with Free World military-industrial leadership. It took the Korean War to finally desegregate the military; and Lyndon Johnson's political tradeoff of Vietnam to realize the Civil Rights and Voting Acts.
This cold-blooded pragmatism bears little resemblance to the lofty righteousness and sacrifice enshrined in memory. Anti-war and anti-racism have become synonymous in the liberal mind, but that is not how American politics worked. As a leftist myself, even I must recognize the hard truth: without the global posturing born of cold war competition (not the anti-Nazism of World War II) the Pettus Bridge would have been just another marginalized Southern bloodbath.
An interesting corollary, not addressed in Dudziak's history, is how long can civil rights last without a totalitarian military enemy to keep the liberal mind on its toes? The "war on terror" just didn't cut it; fighting Putin as the enemy of LGBT rights doesn't work, either; while the current debacle in occupied Palestine - overseen by the party of Truman and Johnson - would have destroyed American credibility altogether. Without an existential enemy, the American moral compass seems to lose direction.
So was the cold war necessary for democracy; or civil rights an excuse to keep the bombs exploding? Such is our world, the truth is both,
Not that these weren't important - just that the romantic imagery of the Pettus Bridge and the March on Washington would have been impossible without the establishment drive, in courts and government, to address segregationist America's image problem in the emerging anti-colonial Third World as it competed with "the Communist Bloc" for global hearts and minds.
Dudziak demonstrates that for Harry Truman, Dean Acheson, the Warren Supreme Court, and latterly Lyndon Johnson, the need to democratize America went hand-in-hand with Free World military-industrial leadership. It took the Korean War to finally desegregate the military; and Lyndon Johnson's political tradeoff of Vietnam to realize the Civil Rights and Voting Acts.
This cold-blooded pragmatism bears little resemblance to the lofty righteousness and sacrifice enshrined in memory. Anti-war and anti-racism have become synonymous in the liberal mind, but that is not how American politics worked. As a leftist myself, even I must recognize the hard truth: without the global posturing born of cold war competition (not the anti-Nazism of World War II) the Pettus Bridge would have been just another marginalized Southern bloodbath.
An interesting corollary, not addressed in Dudziak's history, is how long can civil rights last without a totalitarian military enemy to keep the liberal mind on its toes? The "war on terror" just didn't cut it; fighting Putin as the enemy of LGBT rights doesn't work, either; while the current debacle in occupied Palestine - overseen by the party of Truman and Johnson - would have destroyed American credibility altogether. Without an existential enemy, the American moral compass seems to lose direction.
So was the cold war necessary for democracy; or civil rights an excuse to keep the bombs exploding? Such is our world, the truth is both,
February 3, 2019
Occasionally I find a book that I so obviously should have read years ago that I'm amazed I hadn't even heard of it before. Cold War Civil Rights by Mary Dudziak is 100% one of those books. While I'd already had a good deal of secondhand exposure to the central argument that Cold War soft power concerns were fundamental in shaping US civil rights policy from WWII through the '60s, the details of how the foreign policy establishment attempted to influence and contain the ongoing crisis in the South was easily worth the time for the way in which it recontextualized landmark events of the era such as Brown v Board, Little Rock, and the summer of '64. The mix of legal history and IR frameworks was extremely useful in laying out the specifics of how attempts to maintain the image of American democracy in the global south worked in conjunction with liberal legal theory to push America forward on civil rights in concrete ways while at the same time limiting the future frontiers of racial equality. This book is succinct, written in an incredibly accessible style, deals with so many different topic areas that I love, and is my first major rec of 2019
April 5, 2020
Readers well versed in African American and/or Cold War history coming to Cold War Civil Rights today are likely to read it as less important than it was. Today, Civil Rights historians almost always acknowledge the importance of the African independence movements to the domestic politics feeding into the civil rights movement; politicians who weren't much concerned with (or were hostile to) civil rights understood that the news from Birmingham and the photos of Emmet Till played very badly against American claims to be representing freedom in the world. Dudziak's book was the one that cemented that in the story. The summaries of world response to the major events in the movement retain their value. If you don't know this story, start here.
September 4, 2023
Traces the impacts of the Civil Rights struggles on American foreign policy from the postwar to the end of 1964. The March on Washington gave many countries hope, the Birmingham church bombing shortly afterward put the US back in a troubled position. Obviously many of the stories are of events we know from other books, but in all cases the story is broadened by showing how other countries reacted and what the State Department tried to do about it. For me, some of the incidents where we got into trouble because Mississippi or Maryland or other places refused to accomodate diplomats from African nations or Haiti were new. The pervasive Russian propoganda use of all the incidents was dealt with in detail.
November 7, 2025
Illuminating look at how civil rights legislation was motivated largely by national security concerns. Shows how the Cold War was a mixture of catching flies (the hearts of the third world with vinegar (might, violence, domination) vs honey (equality, moral superiority, democracy)
The book uses way too many examples though. The arguments are not all that complex, so many of the pages are just filled with quotes from various newspapers around the world saying the same things over and over.
Interesting to think of Cold War as a Global Civil War, the UN like the Union, debates about federal vs state politics, federal gov as mediator between state and international community.
The book uses way too many examples though. The arguments are not all that complex, so many of the pages are just filled with quotes from various newspapers around the world saying the same things over and over.
Interesting to think of Cold War as a Global Civil War, the UN like the Union, debates about federal vs state politics, federal gov as mediator between state and international community.
May 15, 2020
This was a really good book. I don’t read much history but I was able to follow along pretty easily and I made it through the whole thing without too much trouble (on the second try, once I didn’t have to read it for school). I feel like I learned some things and it makes me want to learn more. It was well-researched, well-written, and informative.
May 4, 2018
This book really opened my eyes to the real and horrid racism that ran rampant after the the World Wars. It’s easy to forget that racism didn’t end suddenly with the end of slavery. It was still a significant problem in the 1970’s....which wasn’t that long ago!
March 15, 2021
i read this for class and i cannot speak highly enough of it. so well written and researched and just fascinating. great if you are interested in journalistic/media perceptions of america abroad during the cold war + international perceptions of civil rights battles (ex. little rock).
August 7, 2023
I’ve always wondered what the world thought as America denied its citizens of their rights. This book illustrates the peculiar predicament America found itself in as globalization came to be and the nation’s hypocrisies gained an international audience.
April 29, 2012
Dudziak presents a very thorough examination of the intertwining of legal scholarship, African-American history, and American diplomatic history. Through her narrative, Dudziak demonstrates why prominent figures in the American foreign service, including Ambassador Chester Bowles in India, expressed grave concern over the corrosive effect of domestic racial discrimination and violence on American diplomatic initiatives abroad. Dudziak quotes Bowles asking in 1952, “How much does all our talk of democracy mean, if we do not practice it at home? How can the colored peoples of Asia be sure we are sincere ... if we do not respect the equality of our colored people at home?” This question forms the frame for Dudziak’s examination of the influence domestic race relations exerted on American foreign relations.
In his famous “Long Telegram” to Secretary of State George C. Marshall, Ambassador to the Soviet Union George F. Kennan held that “Much depends on health and vigor of our own society. ... This is point at which domestic and foreign policies meet. ... If we cannot abandon fatalism and indifference in face of deficiencies of our own society, Moscow will profit—Moscow cannot help profiting by them in its foreign policies.” Ambassador Kennan, the architect of the containment strategy, went so far as to draw out the implications of domestic affairs for success of the non-military aspects of containment. Writing as “Mr. X,” Kennan published an article, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” in Foreign Affairs 25. “It is rather a question of the degree to which the United States can create among peoples of the world generally the impression of a country which knows what it wants, which is coping successfully with the problems of its internal life and with the responsibilities of a World Power, and which has a spiritual vitality capable of holding its own among the ideological currents of the time.”
Dudziak gives examples of reaction to American domestic failings from the Soviet press, namely from Trud and the wire service Tass. However, one of the most colorful examples of Soviet leverage of American racial discrimination for diplomatic advantage is Цирк (Circus), a Soviet musical released in 1936. The film tells the story of Marion Dixon, an American circus artist and mother of a mixed-race boy out of wedlock. Chased out of the United States by a mob seeking to lynch her, she finds a permanent home in the Soviet Union after she becomes a sensation performing with a Soviet circus. In one of the most famous scenes of the film, members of the circus audience pass around Dixon’s son, singing him a lullaby. The members of the audience represent some of the ethnic diversity of the Soviet Union – Ukrainian women, a Georgian man, an Uzbek sailor, a middle-aged Jewish couple, and the Russian circus ringleader. The baby, James Lloydovich Patterson, was even a mixed-race child of American ancestry whose father emigrated from the United States and eventually married a Russian woman. Despite the many dubious foreign policy assertions postulated in the Cold War era, Kennan and Bowles were correct in the rhetorical potency of pointing out American domestic failures.
The words of Bowles and Kennan were not lost on the Truman administration, as Dudziak, a legal scholar, quite thoroughly details. Saddled with a Congress partially under the thumb of the rump Confederacy (in the form of the Dixiecrats), Truman was left to exert his will with through the various channels and powers of the Executive Branch. Executive Order 9981, issued in the summer of 1948, explicitly directed the Secretary of Defense to ensure the prompt and orderly desegregation of the United States military. Truman acted in no small measure on the urging of A. Philip Randolph, head of the NAACP, who threatened civil disobedience in the form of draft resistance and non-compliance should Truman re-authorize the draft without desegregating the armed services.
Truman’s administration also filed amicus curiae briefs in landmark civil rights cases of the Cold War era, most significantly in the Brown v. Board of Education case, which emphasized to the justices the import of the case to the success of American foreign policy. Secretary of State Dean Acheson was quoted at length in an amicus brief filed by Truman’s Department of Justice in Shelley v. Kraemer. Acheson’s successor, John Foster Dulles, personally contacted Alabama Governor James Folsom, reminding Folsom of the significance of his state’s treatment of Jimmy Wilson. Dudziak cites example after example of State Department influence on domestic legal proceedings, as well as the impressions of Supreme Court justices who traveled abroad. In the second half of Cold War Civil Rights Dudziak expands her scope beyond the courtroom, but for me the impressive depth of scholarship surrounding the efforts of Secretaries of State serving in both Democratic and Republican administrations to influence judicial proceedings in a manner favorable to American foreign relations was particularly authoritative and compelling.
In his famous “Long Telegram” to Secretary of State George C. Marshall, Ambassador to the Soviet Union George F. Kennan held that “Much depends on health and vigor of our own society. ... This is point at which domestic and foreign policies meet. ... If we cannot abandon fatalism and indifference in face of deficiencies of our own society, Moscow will profit—Moscow cannot help profiting by them in its foreign policies.” Ambassador Kennan, the architect of the containment strategy, went so far as to draw out the implications of domestic affairs for success of the non-military aspects of containment. Writing as “Mr. X,” Kennan published an article, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” in Foreign Affairs 25. “It is rather a question of the degree to which the United States can create among peoples of the world generally the impression of a country which knows what it wants, which is coping successfully with the problems of its internal life and with the responsibilities of a World Power, and which has a spiritual vitality capable of holding its own among the ideological currents of the time.”
Dudziak gives examples of reaction to American domestic failings from the Soviet press, namely from Trud and the wire service Tass. However, one of the most colorful examples of Soviet leverage of American racial discrimination for diplomatic advantage is Цирк (Circus), a Soviet musical released in 1936. The film tells the story of Marion Dixon, an American circus artist and mother of a mixed-race boy out of wedlock. Chased out of the United States by a mob seeking to lynch her, she finds a permanent home in the Soviet Union after she becomes a sensation performing with a Soviet circus. In one of the most famous scenes of the film, members of the circus audience pass around Dixon’s son, singing him a lullaby. The members of the audience represent some of the ethnic diversity of the Soviet Union – Ukrainian women, a Georgian man, an Uzbek sailor, a middle-aged Jewish couple, and the Russian circus ringleader. The baby, James Lloydovich Patterson, was even a mixed-race child of American ancestry whose father emigrated from the United States and eventually married a Russian woman. Despite the many dubious foreign policy assertions postulated in the Cold War era, Kennan and Bowles were correct in the rhetorical potency of pointing out American domestic failures.
The words of Bowles and Kennan were not lost on the Truman administration, as Dudziak, a legal scholar, quite thoroughly details. Saddled with a Congress partially under the thumb of the rump Confederacy (in the form of the Dixiecrats), Truman was left to exert his will with through the various channels and powers of the Executive Branch. Executive Order 9981, issued in the summer of 1948, explicitly directed the Secretary of Defense to ensure the prompt and orderly desegregation of the United States military. Truman acted in no small measure on the urging of A. Philip Randolph, head of the NAACP, who threatened civil disobedience in the form of draft resistance and non-compliance should Truman re-authorize the draft without desegregating the armed services.
Truman’s administration also filed amicus curiae briefs in landmark civil rights cases of the Cold War era, most significantly in the Brown v. Board of Education case, which emphasized to the justices the import of the case to the success of American foreign policy. Secretary of State Dean Acheson was quoted at length in an amicus brief filed by Truman’s Department of Justice in Shelley v. Kraemer. Acheson’s successor, John Foster Dulles, personally contacted Alabama Governor James Folsom, reminding Folsom of the significance of his state’s treatment of Jimmy Wilson. Dudziak cites example after example of State Department influence on domestic legal proceedings, as well as the impressions of Supreme Court justices who traveled abroad. In the second half of Cold War Civil Rights Dudziak expands her scope beyond the courtroom, but for me the impressive depth of scholarship surrounding the efforts of Secretaries of State serving in both Democratic and Republican administrations to influence judicial proceedings in a manner favorable to American foreign relations was particularly authoritative and compelling.
March 13, 2018
Such an important book!
October 16, 2022
somewhat repetitive, could have been a great 50 page article
August 6, 2023
very eye opening insight to the actions and sentiments that have formed our country
November 9, 2025
Great book and I knew it had to find an ending point in time but I wish it could have continued until the fall of the Soviet Union. Very well done
December 21, 2007
Cold War, Civil rights contends that formations of race, and federal involvement on racial justice in the United States are inseparable from the international politics. The text reexamines the Civil Rights movement in the context of Cold War foreign policy from the Truman administration through the Johnson administration. The book reexamines familiar moments in Civil Rights history such as the march on Washington, the Birmingham bombings, and the Watts Riots through the lens of the Cold War. By 1949 (and existing before) the Soviet Union “manipulated” US racial injustice to characterize the hypocrisy of American democracy. The United States attempted to counter such narratives by reframing racial strife in the United States as a tale of progress against a regional problem of racial discrimination. US racial violence, segregation, prejudice, etc was not only used as anti-American propaganda by Communist-bloc nations, but threatened to turn newly independent countries in Africa against the United States – a situation which was constantly exacerbated by the treatment that foreign diplomats received when visiting the US, including those enroute to the United Nations in New York. Ultimately, Dudziak contends that Cold War shaped both the opportunities and the limitations of the post-war Civil Rights movement.
The first chapter demonstrated the international scope of the Civil rights problem. The second chapter examines the US efforts at counter narrative including its responses to figures like WEB Dubois, Paul Robeson and Josephine Baker. Chapter Three focuses on the Truman administration and Brown v. board; Chapter Four examines the Eisenhower administration in the context of Little Rock; Chapter Five looks at Kennedy’s administration and Chapter Six looks at Johnson’s administration. The point of the final part of the book is that Kennedy was forced to deal with Civil Rights issues. Although it wasn’t a priority of his, he became convinced that he needed to get the issues out of the streets and into the courts to avoid embarrassing the nation and endangering his role as a world leader. Chapter Six details the way Johnson’s attempts to forge a civil rights legacy were gradually overshadowed by Vietnam, which came to reflect the US image in the world rather than the civil rights images of the decades before.
Part of the book felt repetitive (making it a quick read), but the argument is solid and the “new” context for the civil rights movement is convincing enough to feel obvious.
The first chapter demonstrated the international scope of the Civil rights problem. The second chapter examines the US efforts at counter narrative including its responses to figures like WEB Dubois, Paul Robeson and Josephine Baker. Chapter Three focuses on the Truman administration and Brown v. board; Chapter Four examines the Eisenhower administration in the context of Little Rock; Chapter Five looks at Kennedy’s administration and Chapter Six looks at Johnson’s administration. The point of the final part of the book is that Kennedy was forced to deal with Civil Rights issues. Although it wasn’t a priority of his, he became convinced that he needed to get the issues out of the streets and into the courts to avoid embarrassing the nation and endangering his role as a world leader. Chapter Six details the way Johnson’s attempts to forge a civil rights legacy were gradually overshadowed by Vietnam, which came to reflect the US image in the world rather than the civil rights images of the decades before.
Part of the book felt repetitive (making it a quick read), but the argument is solid and the “new” context for the civil rights movement is convincing enough to feel obvious.
August 11, 2013
An excellent look at how Jim Crow not only clashed with American ideals but with American foreign policy goals in the Cold War, American leaders and diplomats trying to rally the world against Communism discovered that nonwhite Third World Nations refused to ignore American segregation and related injustices (the story of a black man sentenced to death for stealing $2 became an international case celebre). Unsurprisingly, the initial solutions were propaganda (newsreels and speakers assuring the world that American democracy was the champion of racial equality and Tremendous Strides Were Being Made) and repression (deny passports to Americans who didn’t toe the line, or using influence to kill their speaking or performing gigs overseas). Nevertheless, gradually the government began pushing for at least a moderate level of reform (desegregating the military, where mistreatment of blacks was very visible overseas) and gradually moving faster (though depending on the president, with various levels of enthusiasm). Dudziak also looks at racist resistance, from the insistence that civil rights was all a Commie plot to the argument that preserving Jim Crow in the face of Soviet criticism would be the more heroic course.
October 30, 2015
Although Dudziak 1) downplays the Kennedy's fear and racial actions against MLK Jr, 2) neglects that Malcolm X was gunned down for shedding his violent rhetoric, 3) neglects LBJ's statement concerning Civil Rights:" I'll have those niggers voting Democrat for 50 years!", 4) forgetting that in fact the USSR did infiltrate Ciivl Rights Movements and made it more violent and 5) finally taking cheap shots on Goldwater by denying the fact he voted for other Civil Rights Acts, was crucial in the creation and passing of many desegregating and anti-lynching laws and his support of the only one CRA he was against, thus casting him as a heartless GOP racist, this is a great work that shows how globally influenced and watched over was our efforts during the Civil Rights era and how the Cold War was a major player in how our domestic concerns came to be. This internationalizing of this segment of American History was much needed and proves this was not just a southern or national thing, but a global issue. Despite these major five faults listed above and a number of editing and grammar issues, this should be read, though also needs more work in addressing the 5 issues above.
March 19, 2015
A detailed, well organized exploration of the foreign relations implications of a series of major events of the civil rights movement, particularly during the presidencies of Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy. Covers familiar ground in terms of the events it explores, but attacks them from a completely different perspective, using foreign media, reports of US propaganda organizations, and internal State Department memos to examine the reactions to events and American governmental motives for change. Enthralling and persuasive.
May 24, 2017
Dudziak provides an interesting study which combines domestic politics with an international perspective. Race issues undermined the U.S. image of democracy and equality in the eyes of small nations. As two-thirds of the global population was non-white, Dudziak describes how these issues wrecked havoc on the foreign policies of the Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy administrations. Powerful civil rights legislation would begin a new image for America but would still be combating by Soviet propaganda in the battles for third world "hearts and minds."
March 4, 2008
This is another one of those exciting books that makes me remember just how little I know. I had honestly never before put the cold war and the civil rights momvement into the same era. In my head, they comprised two seperate spheres of history, but this book, in a well-written style, lets you see just how intertwined these two historical narratives really were.
May 26, 2013
Great survey of the civil rights movement, but with emphasis laid on the ways in which foreign relations shaped the movement here at home. With a good narrative and careful attention to scholarly historical literature, this is a great book that will appeal both to laymen and professional historians alike. Really a fine work of history.
August 22, 2015
A great read, especially in light of current American discourse on race. Consistently interesting and enlightening, this book delves into governmental motivations behind civil rights reform in the twenty years following World War II. I would recommend this to anyone, but especially to people who are prepared to think more critically about race in America and who want to see further reform today.
September 21, 2016
Very thought-provoking book. Offers a new perspective on the postwar Civil Rights movement, one you don't often see. I didn't really like the writing style--it was kind of boring--but, on the other hand, it WAS very clear and easy-to-follow and that's definitely a plus right now. (Grad school and two books per week, anyone? ;-) )
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